


For The Dead, For The Living

by Maybethings



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Dragon Age Kink Meme, F/M, Kink Meme, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maybethings/pseuds/Maybethings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Mahariel’s time of grief, Sten has words for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For The Dead, For The Living

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a very, very old k!meme request: _I just want me some Sten fluff, having recently realized what a softie he really was. Just him reading those Qunari Prayers for the Dead or reciting some excerpt from the Qun, or just using the language to F!Warden (whichever one!) while she’s tired/sick/wounded/justbeforearchdemon/something. Sexiness totally optional <3_.

Mahariel missed the clan every single day—but never before like in this moment. Her heart ached for the comfort of her Keeper’s presence, Merrill’s shoulders to cry on, Hahren Paivel’s solemn eulogy. She knew the proper words, but not how to deliver them past the knot in her throat.

 _Tamlen is dead,_ she thought to the empty air. _He is dead. He became a darkspawn, and I have killed him._

The Grey Warden knelt alone before his grave: the one she had dug with her bare hands, as deep into the soil as it would go, with a tree at his head. He had been so light when she lowered him into the ground. When had Tamlen become so of much nothing, more shadow than skin and bone? The Taint had done all of this—but in the end, it was her blade, no other’s, that had snuffed out his life.

A twig snapped behind her. Mahariel flew to her feet, dagger drawn. Sten didn’t even step back, though the tip of the blade lay mere inches from his chest. He regarded the elf calmly: a little, wild-eyed creature with teeth bared and hair in sweaty disarray, streaked with fresh mud from forehead to foot.

“You’re covered in earth.”

“Thank you, ser obvious,” she mumbled, letting her arm fall. Let the dirt stay; she felt unclean enough anyway. “What are you sneaking up on me for? Or did you have some other words of wisdom for me, Sten?” The careful, accentless construct of her King’s Tongue crumbled away, her native elvhen lilt slipping into her words. “Come to tell me I shouldn’t mourn my own brother, or that we should stop wasting time and move on?”

“If you did not hear my approach, that is your own shortcoming. I came to pray.”

“You…what now?”

Ignoring her, Sten strode past Mahariel toward the foot of the grave. There was a carefully bound scroll in his hands—the same one she had gifted to him some moons ago, covered in foreign, spidery script and clearly constructed with a lot of care. “ _Shok ebasit hissra,_ ” he said out loud. “ _Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun. Maraas shokra. Anaan esaam qun._ ”

The words, deep and slow, calmed her in a way she hadn’t thought possible. “What does all that mean?” she asked, her voice barely a murmur.

“It is the Qunari tongue. ‘Struggle is illusion. The tide rises, the tide falls, the sea is constant. There is no struggle. Victory is in the Qun’.” He paused to look at the Warden’s face, flickering as it was between various degrees of grief and confusion. “Do you wish me to continue?”

“You don’t have to.” Her laugh was thinner and more bitter than she’d have liked. “You didn’t even know him.”  _He is mine alone to mourn_.

Sten tapped the book of prayers. “You did not know the one who wrote these. Neither do I. But you delivered them to me, and I say them for another.”

“…Then, please,” she said finally, crossing her arms over her chest.

“ _Meravas,_ ” the Qunari intoned. “So shall it be.” He continued—but it was nothing like the invective he reserved for the chaos of combat: the sharp consonants that cut like knives, the raw, explosive vowels of his battle cries. These were softer words, that rang of loss, and healing, and respect for those who had gone before. Mahariel felt tears pricking at her eyes and nose. There was so much wrong to be undone, so much death that might yet come, and her hand was the only one which could stay it. But she was only one elf in the face of the whole world—

“We are not alone.”

“Excuse me?”

“It is as the prayers say.  _Drop by drop is the ocean formed. Under the Qun, no man is alone._ ” Sten turned to her, speaking slowly, carefully. “ _As wave begets wave, draw strength from your brothers. Do not look into the darkness with a single pair of eyes._ ”

The knot came rudely undone then, no longer able to hold back her grief. A great sob shook the elf as she crumbled at last, keening behind the cover of both hands. Sten let her cry, resting a heavy, grounding hand on her shoulder. “He was brother to me,” she wept. “One of…one of mine.  _Home_.”

“I understand,” he replied, and from the sound of his words, she knew that somewhere, somehow, he did.

Mahariel dashed the tears from her face at last, smearing mud across her cheeks. “I will sing our songs for him too. Those of the Dalish. He deserves that much from me. But…please stay, Sten.” she added, voice thick with tears, hopeful. “I don’t want to do this alone tonight.”

Surprisingly, the Qunari did not move away. “The dead do not hear our cries,  _kadan_ ,” he said quietly, reaching out to trace a smudge on her brow with his thumb. She didn’t ask him what the last word meant; his simply being there was all the explanation required. “The Prayers for the Dead are recited by the living. Tonight we mourn. Tomorrow, we live on.”


End file.
